After months of previews, keynotes, press events, and hands-on meetings, October 26th is finally upon us, and for Ars that means one thing: it's time to stop just looking at the often-bizarre new PC designs that Windows 8 and Windows RT have inspired, and time to start actually using them.

Our first PC, Asus' VivoTab RT, is of the tablet-with-keyboard-dock persuasion, a form factor that attempts to equip its user to make full use of the new Metro touch-optimized interface as well as the time-tested Windows desktop. The "RT" in its name throws another curveball our way, because it means this tablet is running Windows RT on an ARM processor—not only is this our first proper review of a true Windows tablet, but it's our first review of a Windows device that isn't using an x86 processor.

Meet the VivoTab RT

Despite its new operating system, the VivoTab RT—also called the Vivo Tab RT with a space, depending on which of Asus' marketing materials you happen to be looking at—doesn't deviate much from the basic form factor defined by the iPad and countless Android tablets. The front of the tablet is consumed mostly by its 1366×768 IPS touchscreen, which supports five simultaneous inputs and has excellent color and viewing angles. The screen is surrounded on all sides by a black bezel, which is slightly thicker on the top and bottom than on the left and right.

Enlarge/ The VivoTab RT's Start button is a touch button rather than a physical one.

Andrew Cunningham

Embedded in that bezel is a 2.0 megapixel webcam (which, for whatever reason, is aligned slightly to the right of the tablet's center) and a Windows logo, which can be tapped to bring up the Start screen. Unlike other tablets we've seen, the Windows button on the Vivo RT is touch-enabled, rather than an actual physical button, and the tablet's motor vibrates slightly when the button is pressed to provide some feedback.

If you've ever used a widescreen 10" Android tablet before, the VivoTab RT will feel very familiar in your hands. At 1.16 pounds, it's pretty easy to hold with one hand while gripping the center of the device, but the tablet's length makes it tiring to hold for very long if you're grabbing onto the left or right edge or holding the tablet in portrait mode.

All of the tablet's ports and buttons are located around its edge. On the bottom, you've got the retention mechanism for the keyboard dock and a proprietary power jack. This jack is also used to hook up to the included ugly, bulky USB dongle—it clashes with the tablet's slim aesthetic, but does allow you to attach accessories like mice, USB drives, and cameras. Unfortunately, no USB ports (Mini, Micro, or otherwise) are included on the tablet itself.

Enlarge/ A Micro HDMI and microSD card slot are both concealed on the upper-left edge of the tablet.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ Headphones and a volume jack on the upper-right corner of the tablet.

Enlarge/ The power plug and docking mechanism on the bottom of the tablet.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ The included bulky USB 2.0 dongle plugs into the power port on the keyboard and the dock to enable the use of drives and peripherals.

Andrew Cunningham

Opening the small cover on the tablet's left edge will expose its Micro HDMI port, and directly next to that is the tablet's microSD card slot. On the bottom is a slider that releases the tablet from its keyboard dock when they're connected. The power button and a small hard reset pinhole are the only things on the top of the tablet, and the device's right edge houses the headphone jack and volume rocker.

The rear is mostly smooth brushed aluminum, with a slightly darker rubberized strip for the top quarter or so of the tablet. The overall build quality is excellent—more solid than the plastic of Asus' own Nexus 7 tablet, and worlds better than the mushy, flexing plastic used in Samsung's comparably priced Galaxy Note 10.1. Between this and the Zenbook Prime we looked at a few months ago, Asus is demonstrating a knack for building quality hardware that I'd like to see more PC makers emulate.

An 8.0 megapixel camera and LED flash are centered at the top of the tablet, while speakers adorn the left and right edges. The speakers are nothing special, but they're clear and don't distort at higher volumes. However, when holding the tablet by its left or right edges, I found it pretty easy to inadvertently block the sound with my hands.

Enlarge/ The back of the VivoTab RT. There's a camera with LED flash at the top and a speaker on each side.

Andrew Cunningham

The rear camera is capable of taking serviceable pictures in normal indoor and outdoor lighting, and is neither particularly excellent nor particularly awful. Compared to my iPhone 4S, its colors are a bit more muted, and it takes softer (but less noisy) images indoors. The 2.0 megapixel front camera is fine for video chatting but not much else, putting it on par with just about every integrated webcam in every tablet we've ever looked at.

Enlarge/ Two pictures of the same desk junk taken in indoor lighting, taken by the iPhone 4S (top) and the VivoTab RT (bottom). The colors in the VivoTab RT's picture are a bit more muted and its image is much softer. The iPhone 4S captures more detail but is visibly noisier.

I was hoping to hear a little bit more about office 2013 on an RT tablet since it is one of the major selling points. Are you guys keeping it for another review?

Additionally, there is little mention of default apps. MS just updated the music app with unlimited streaming options, paid and free. And that alone is a killer software. How well does that app work on this tablet? How about the default map app? Is it any good on this tablet? How does IE10 perform on ARM hardware?

I understand that this is a review of a particular tablet. But, I am sure readers like me would like to hear more about at least the available default apps.

Ugh, this is nice, but a standard micro-USB would be so helpful. I'm waiting out for the higher resolution models (maybe next year?) and perhaps the new Atom (definitely next year). The first one with micro USB gets my money.

At 599 including dock this is an intriguing bit of hardware, but still a bit high in price for me to go in simply as an experiment. It'd need to be a couple of hundred $ cheaper for this config or offer more compelling hardware (a 1080p screen would be an excellent start)

I was hoping to hear a little bit more about office 2013 on an RT tablet since it is one of the major selling points. Are you guys keeping it for another review?

Additionally, there is little mention of default apps. MS just updated the music app with unlimited streaming options, paid and free. And that alone is a killer software. How well does that app work on this tablet? How about the default map app? Is it any good on this tablet? How does IE10 perform on ARM hardware?

I understand that this is a review of a particular tablet. But, I am sure readers like me would like to hear more about at least the available default apps.

We're definitely planning on touching on that stuff soon - it's tough because we didn't want to duplicate the work that we've been doing behind-the-scenes for Windows 8/RT. Rest assured that it's coming, though! :-)

Honest question: Is Microsoft going to have to be careful, with respect to its monopoly sanctions, about preloading IE and Office on these things, or has that time passed?

One can easily argue that MS has no monopoly in the tablet space.

Certainly, but the line appears to be blurring with all the Microsoft Surface announcements. I'm just not well versed in the specifics of what Microsoft's legal obligations are, and where (if anywhere) those obligations are no longer valid.

The multi-touch trackpad is similarly small, but it’s a bit less of a problem. The emerging standard bunch of common multitouch gestures is all supported: tap-to-click, two finger right-clicking, pinching to zoom, and two-finger scrolling are present. Oddly enough, the trackpad doesn’t support the operating system’s new touch gestures—Windows-specific things like swiping to switch apps work on the tablet's screen, but not on the trackpad. There exists the possibility that new drivers will enable this functionality later on, but it’s not there now.

The edge swipe gestures were disabled at the request of Microsoft, because the touchpad is very small, and they are extremely picky about how things should work for RT.

ASUS will eventually have an app that allows turning those (and other) gestures back on, as the driver is fully capable of supporting them. It may be part of the updates that go live on the 26th. (Just a guess, as I don't work for ASUS or MS)

Honest question: Is Microsoft going to have to be careful, with respect to its monopoly sanctions, about preloading IE and Office on these things, or has that time passed?

One can easily argue that MS has no monopoly in the tablet space.

Certainly, but the line appears to be blurring with all the Microsoft Surface announcements. I'm just not well versed in the specifics of what Microsoft's legal obligations are, and where (if anywhere) those obligations are no longer valid.

I believe the DOJ consent decree has expired, if that's what you mean.

Additionally, there is little mention of default apps. MS just updated the music app with unlimited streaming options, paid and free. And that alone is a killer software. How well does that app work on this tablet? How about the default map app? Is it any good on this tablet? How does IE10 perform on ARM hardware?

To me, this seems a little Jekyll and Hyde. As a tablet, it seems adequate. But then you dock it and it becomes a netbook. Eww. Curiously, the keydock has managed to knock this down a notch.

On the other hand, for some reason the Surface doesn't remind me of a netbook when its cover is added. Maybe I don't take the Touch Cover to be a serious keyboard, and therefore it doesn't bump the Surface out of the tablet category.

I don't quite understand why netbooks have become evil. When did it become self-evident that "being like a netbook" = "bad?"

It's really more "bad for a primary computer" than "bad" period. As I mentioned, I actually did enjoy using it while docked, but the keyboard is just small enough to be uncomfortable for long periods of time. The keyboard is of much higher quality than in most netbooks, FWIW.

Ugh, this is nice, but a standard micro-USB would be so helpful. I'm waiting out for the higher resolution models (maybe next year?) and perhaps the new Atom (definitely next year). The first one with micro USB gets my money.

Good luck charging the thing via USB (at least if you also want to transfer data over it).

With tablets USB is hitting the wall hard. I doubt very much that you'll see many tablets without a proprietary charger socket or dock adapter, especially Intel tablets.

MS would be very wise to come up with some open standard for that, because USB just isn't enough.

It seems to me that Microsoft is really managing to muddy the waters of what is what in the 8 ecosystem. If I have this straight, we will have Windows 8 on x86 which will run legacy / desktop applications but will also sport a Metro interface for apps from the Windows store. We also have Windows 8 RT which runs on ARM and runs Metro apps and sort-of pretends it can run legacy / desktop apps but really doesn't. And then we have WP8 which also runs ARM Metro apps and doesn't pretend to run any desktop / legacy apps.

I can certainly imagine that users will see Office on the desktop on RT and think that RT will run legacy x86 apps but it won't. I can also imagine that users will see the Metro interface on Win8 and think it will run RT apps, but there is no guarantee of that right? Is Microsoft going to require developers to compile their apps for both RT and Win8? Is that even going to be a trivial operation (i.e. just select both development targets) or do Metro apps have to be specifically targeted to RT and Win8? What about WP8 and RT?

I'm not sure it's a viable strategy when you are so far behind the competition (as Microsoft is in the phone and tablet space) to fragment your strategy like this. And to do so in such a confusing manner. What steps is Microsoft taking to ensure that Metro apps are available on all of the platforms in the ecosystem?

not only is this our first proper review of a true Windows tablet, but it's our first review of a Windows device that isn't using a processor from Intel.

Or AMD?

Ha! I'll update that. :-)

I was originally planning to suggest using "an x86 processor" instead, but then I started wondering if you'd ever written any review of an Itanium system running Windows. I then decided to hold that suggestion until I'd had the time to check.

I don't quite understand why netbooks have become evil. When did it become self-evident that "being like a netbook" = "bad?"

My personal experience with the first gen netbooks left an indelible impression. Every so often at work, I poke one that's logging some data on a test unit, which refreshes my dislike for the product. Granted, my ignorance to current netbooks is nil, since I avoid them due to the bad taste they left before. I'm stubborn that way.

"you’ll be limited to the Windows Store for all of your applications, and as of this writing that’s a serious liability"

This seems a little unfair. Windows RT is effectively a new mobile OS. Yes, as a new mobile OS, which has not even been officially released yet, there are not a lot of apps for it. But I think it would be more fair to say that this is an uncertainty about the platform -- how fast will apps be released and how many developers will decide to support it. I am sure that Microsoft will see better app support than other companies desperately trying to scare up developer support for their own mobile OSes, even though Microsoft may pay a price for it in consumer confusion and the harm they've done to their desktop OS by grotesquely implanting a mobile OS into it.

"Enlarge / MetroTwit (see left) is a great use of Windows RT’s snap feature, but the fact that its built-in advertisements completely obscure the Retweet and Reply buttons when snapped is a deal-breaker."

Advertisements in the interface? Really? Mind you I guess it's really in the Twitter interface but I don't really like the attitude of ads in interfaces. I hate what they have done to Xbox 360 as well.

It seems disingenuous to knock the platform for not having metro apps available _before_ it's released. Given that the platform is virtually guaranteed to ship hundreds of millions of units I'm pretty confident betting it'll be the fastest platform in history to hit 100k apps.

It seems disingenuous to knock the platform for not having metro apps available _before_ it's released. Given that the platform is virtually guaranteed to ship hundreds of millions of units I'm pretty confident betting it'll be the fastest platform in history to hit 100k apps.

Maybe, but we have to review the product that's there, not the product that might be there in six months.

"you’ll be limited to the Windows Store for all of your applications, and as of this writing that’s a serious liability"This seems a little unfair...

Personally I don't think it's unfair and it's one of the main reason I don't have much interest in a RT tablet. I just don't see anything RT offers that I can't already get for less money with an Android tablet. I'm quite insterested in a Windows 8 tablet, but am going to need them to come down quite a bit in price before I consider actually buying one.

The brightness setting could be a big part of it. Anand's review says it has a very bright screen, if it uses a traditional scale then 50% brightness would be the same as 70% on the ipad 3 or Kindle Fire.

But it's worth pointing out that Anad's review doesn't mention the screen brightness, wifi settings etc used during their battery test.

It seems disingenuous to knock the platform for not having metro apps available _before_ it's released. Given that the platform is virtually guaranteed to ship hundreds of millions of units I'm pretty confident betting it'll be the fastest platform in history to hit 100k apps.

Plus there are lots of apps in existence, and MS dev tools are pretty top notch, with costs being apparently very low (compared to other platforms), so it wouldn't be too surprising indeed to see a lot of apps not too far in the future.

It seems disingenuous to knock the platform for not having metro apps available _before_ it's released. Given that the platform is virtually guaranteed to ship hundreds of millions of units I'm pretty confident betting it'll be the fastest platform in history to hit 100k apps.

Maybe, but we have to review the product that's there, not the product that might be there in six months.

That's fair, and I know publications are under pressure to get these sort of reviews out early, but this strikes me as similar to releasing a review for the latest call of duty game 24 hours before launch and dinging it because "multiplayer is unusable due to a lack of players online."

I also think it's a problem that will rectify itself a lot sooner than in 6 months. I'd wager by the end of the first couple weeks there will be a large collection of apps.

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.